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"Accomplice Liability" Laws Imprison Victims for Abusers' Actions / Shannon Heffernan

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Women are often thought to be accountable for the actions of people around them. That they're supposed to manage their husbands, or boyfriends, or manage their children. That extends to how people think about women who are in relationships with men who commit crimes. I think the other way it ends up applying is just a minimization of the power of abuse and how much it can really affect a person's actions. I read in some of the cases we uncovered, a judge would say something like, “well, you know, what happened to her was terrible, but she could have left. She should have left.” And that's a real misunderstanding of how abuse functions. If you beat somebody terribly again and again and again, the day you say to them, “hey, steal that thing for me while I'm committing these murders,” you don't have to threaten them, right? It's implied.

Shannon Heffernan of the Marshall Project discusses her article, "Serving Time for Their Abusers’ Crimes: The Marshall Project found nearly 100 people who were punished for the actions of their abusers under little-known laws like “accomplice liability.

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Guest

Shannon Heffernan

Shannon Heffernan is a staff writer for The Marshall Project covering prison conditions, experiences of the incarcerated, their families and corrections officers, the federal Bureau of Prisons and the death penalty.